Miscellaneous

Summary: recommend me a wet vac I can use to suck all the nasty water out of my A/C pan. So last summer I had issues with my pan under my A/C in the attic overflowing and staining my ceiling. This probably happened for a variety of reasons: My pan for some reason leans to the opposite side of where it drains Also for some reason the "kill switch" that cuts off the A/C when the water reaches a certain level was on the wrong side. So water was draining out the other end of the pan, and the kill switch was never switched. The drain pipes are probably clogged up because as a first time homeowner I knew nothing of keeping A/C drainage pipes clean, so didn't do anything…

Pretty cool link I've found on H-F, it's a bunch of A/B tests to measure how well you can hear distortion. The tests are simple and well-made and you can compare your results with the average of the other participants at the end. Audibility Of Distortion

Just looking for some recommendations for good CD-R that I could use for burning music, since most of CD-R's I buy are crappy generic ones I use for data-related purposes.

You know you want to talk about it ... e.g. http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12694772/apple-event-live-stream-new-iphone-7-announcement-schedule https://live.theverge.com/apple-iphone-7-launch-event-live-blog/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2016/09/07/liveblog-all-the-news-from-the-iphone-7-event-as-they-happen/#2b41f8b72472

Hello, this saturday day we are flying out for our first family trip to Disney world - Molly (age 5) and Myles (age 3) do not know yet, so don't say anything. The wife has appointed me to find a nice backpack that will hold all the typical little kids survival tools that will be needed - snacks, juice, rain ponchos, electronics, etc. I would love to know what you guys are using for family trips, this would be a backpack I would wear big enough to hold a bunch of stuff without being too bulky.

it's another afternoon to evening in the city by the bay. I'm going to class, getting out of discussion, when I see a beautiful tree against a lit stone building. The sun is going down... I prepare, set up, click, hold... and when i get back home, I realize it was too slow... the image isn't as sharp, i'm shaking too much. I meet a group of friends at a restaurant, I take pictures as they come in, but they wink too much when my flash goes off. The light around it isn't bad, but being indoors is a disaster for this lens. I tell my camera not to flash. I get two results, either it's kinda dark and the guy sitting next to Teresa (my subject) isn't even visible. Or...…

Hi to all I am a regular over at HF and I recogise many of the posters here. I lurk here a bit, but only once previously had the inclination to post. My question relates to burn-in. As stated in the thread title, why does burn-in only ever improve gear? I have posted this over at the other place a few times, but of course it gets ignored. Now I'm not so sure about the whole burn-in thing personally. I've never really had a 'wow' experience. There is teh real chance that I'm just too deaf to hear any difference. I can understand why drivers might need some time to loosen up, but electronics? Anyway.... back to the real issue at hand here... Given the scenario w…

Henceforth known as IDAR. Or speaker room. I'm taking off most of next week and besides a lil' road trip up north, I'll have lots of time on my hands. So I'm finally going to make an attempt to convert the extra room into a dedicated 2 channel audio room. I think I'm going to start by just having my analog rig, 840A, and obviously the Quad 22Ls in there. The room is by no means perfect but I'm bound to get better bass performance then in the tiny office space I currently use my speakers in. Here are some before shots: Northwest: Northeast: Southwest: Southeast: Obviously this has acted as the "hey lets throw this shit in here" ro…

Hello everyone, I hope this is the right spot for this. I have recently been buying stuff at a local liquidator, because money is tight and I'm always on the lookout for good deals. I've had a relatively good experience with this liquidator, and have for instance bought three Huion USB drawing tablets for $60, which I promptly turned around and resold on eBay for $180 before shipping. So, when I saw they had listed a pair of Sennheiser HD660S headphones, I knew I had to win them. I got them for $161! I picked them up, and sure enough they were new...But the wrong model! The box, and case is all genuine Sennheiser, even the original manual for the HD660S was incl…

Thinking of possibly rolling my MC 30. FWIR thus far the 6P1 is not replaceable with an EL84, only similar. Has anyone noticed any audilbe differences between the 6P1 and the 6P1P Svetlana? Thanks.

I spent the last two hours disassembling my old bedroom system, cleaning out the area where it was, and installing the new gear. There was, ahem, a lot of dust behind stereo shelf (and I wonder why I have such allergy problems ). The old system was my father's: Yamaha receiver, CDP and Pinnacle speakers, all purchased in 1997. The CDP is still in the new system, but it is serving primarily as a surface to hold up the RR2150. I never really took any pictures of the old system, as it wasn't very interesting. This is the only shot I have: As an aside, the new Flickr interface is a nightmare to use. Click through for notes on what's in the photo. I lugged a re…

I think it's time for me to finally pick up a RCM. I've been using a dry brush mostly because all the vinyl I buy is new, but I'm starting to buy more and more used. Any suggestions? A used VPI HW-16 looks like a decent option that can always be upgraded to the HW-16.5, but I have no idea if the older model had any problems. Any comments, suggestions, or other recommendations? Thanks.

This many buttons requires a new thread. Who's buying a Blackmagic ATEM Mini Extreme ISO? https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/blackmagic-atem-mini-video-switcher-goes-extreme

I've given the idea of this thread some thought on and off for years (going back at least as far as Mikhail's Bad Hair Day) but never actually made one. ADD is a hell of a drug. Also been busy with a few other things. It's not secret that there are many companies that make and sell high end audio products that look shiny, cost large sums of money and have questionable performance. (There's also products that are expensive, shiny and sound incredible, but y'all know that of course.) It's not unheard of for companies to engage in lawfare against competitors and critics they dislike. BOSE is infamously litigious. Earlier this year Tekton Audio went after critics over …

So, I recently stumbled on this site (http://src.infinitewave.ca/) where they compare various software-based SRC implementations. The tests compare 96kHz conversion down to 44.1kHz. Clicking on "Help" brings up an interesting article on the whole subject of SRC in general. Just by clicking through the results of a few popular DAW and audio editing apps, there are noticeable differences in the results that come out of that. That leaves me wondering...how good are the hardware-based upsampling algorithms in DAC's today? From DAC's such as the PSA DLIII's to dcs Purcell's, just how good are those hardware-based upsampling algorithms? If someone were inclined, would the…

Anybody know how to disable Nvidia's Optimus function? Googling didn't lead to a good answer. I did a clean install of Win 8 (then 8.1) onto Sandisk Extreme II 480 GB SSD for Dell 17R SE (1980x1020, i7, 8GB), and now Windows Experience Index is quite high for all, Except for graphics performance. Intel graphics HD4000 and Nvidia GT650M (with Optimus) can't be as bad as this ChrisPC Win experience says? (Win 8.1 dropped genuine Win Experience ap) IMG_20140529_145412 by drjlo1, on Flickr IMG_20140529_190543 by drjlo1, on Flickr

Ok, in true Head Case fashion I have decided I need a higher end audio card for my office system. Currently I am running windows XP foobar and iTunes out via usb to my PS Audio balanced dac. The PS Audio dac will sample out to 192 but as you know usb will only go to 96K and I can't seem to get ASIO4all to load onto my computer so the better solution would seem to be to spend some moolah and just take a great leap forward. I am currently acquiring more and more 192K music files so I would like to experience the full extent of what my office system can offer while I am still alive. It seems that Lynx sound cards are highly regarded and can output 192K. There is the Lyn…

ok, so a couple questions that might seem strange, but.. once digital signal shows up on a digital input, what happens? What I mean is, I'm assuming the driver goes into a fetch loop and it just writes that info to disk. Is there room here for errors or quality degradation? What sort of software is there out there do this "recording", any recommendations? Finally, is there some sort of standalone unit that can do this and say dump the data to a CF card or something? I'm mildly curious also how this is done with DSD as well.

"Open Source AirPlay." Something to keep an eye on... http://www.magicplay.com/

I am looking into getting a 360 degree camera for VR tours on campus (for hiring and recruiting grad students in the spring) and also just to play with for fun. I've been looking into the Ricoh cameras. Other suggestions are the Gopro Max but I already have a GoPro Hero 9. https://theta360.com/en/ Anyone tried any of these cameras?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/27/23978507/roon-the-popular-high-end-music-streaming-system-has-been-acquired-by-samsung-subsidiary-harman https://news.samsung.com/global/harman-acquires-roon-a-popular-multi-device-multi-room-audio-technology-platform https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/harman-acquires-roon/ https://darko.audio/2023/11/harman-buys-roon/ https://twitteringmachines.com/harman-bought-roon/ https://www.whathifi.com/news/harman-acquires-roon-heres-what-that-means-for-subscribers https://news.harman.com/releases/harman-acquires-roon-a-popular-multi-device-multi-room-audio-technology-platform And the Roon side of the s…

Does anyone have experience with this device. For some unknown ridiculous reason, my company only supports Windows Mobile devices. The device they supply is the Samsung Jack (on horrible ATT). This is the free and easy option. I could get another (Windows Mobile) device and have them jam it into the network, but I'm not sure how much of the tab they'll pick up. So for the moment, I'm trying to determine whether the Samsung Jack at least approaches the business feature set of a Blackberry or whether this is just a waste of time.

Audio theory question. If you have two components with separate volume controls in your signal chain (in my particular case a passive pre-amp and a headphone amp), what would be the preferred method of setting the playback level: Max out pre, use amp pot; max out amp, use pre pot; half and half (or whatever other proportion you fancy)? In practice, using an SPL meter to crudely level match, I can't discern any particular difference in sound quality. But I'd be interested to know if there's a rule of thumb.

Title says it all. As of 3rd December SME announced that they were no longer supplying pickup arms, and now would only provide them integrated with an SME turntable. https://sme.co.uk/2019/12/03/sme-product-announcement/ They instantly removed the entire pickup arm category from their website. Thus ends pretty much to the month 60 years and >1 million arm sales since Alastair Robertson-Aikman sold the first SME pickup arm. Of course, the new owner (Ajay Shirke) and the new MD Stuart McNeilis can do what the hell they want - but it seems to be a major strategic error to withdraw from arm sales. The entry price for the lowest cost SME package will now be t…

Rare AM stereo station tour at KYET (C-QUAM): Skipping to Pt. 4 at another station (WION):